Anyone who has been to Paris several times knows it is more like 20 cities than one.

Twenty is the number of arrondissements inside the peripherique, the circular roadway that divides Paris from its suburbs, and each of those 20 has its own personality — and sometimes several personalities, as you move about inside the neighborhoods.

The tourist- and government-dominated 1st. The finance-driven 2nd. The staid 7th. The wealthy 16th. The grim 19th and 20th.

We just spent two weeks in the 11th.

Where does it fit on the palette of Paris?

Crowded. Lively. Gritty. Dirty. Young. Gray.

The 11th has practically no monuments or museums tourists would seek out.

But the 11th is a place where you can find a bistro on every block and a bakery on every second block and a grocery on every third.

The 11th seems well-suited as a bedroom for people with jobs in the center of the city.

It is by no means the most populated arrondissement, with 155,000 people (232,000 live in the 15th), but it is the most densely populated in the city.

A factor there may be the lack of parks or any sort of greenery. The color of the 11th is gray.

The 11th also tends to have very few of the Haussmann-inspired grands boulevards, and even its sidewalks are narrow. In many places, two people walking and meeting up with two coming the opposite direction, will be reduced to single-file walking — or someone stepping out into the street.

The lack of elbow room can be palpable, at times.

The 11th is the sort of place where it seems most everyone has a job, but it also is a neighborhood where people on the move will just abandon their unwanted junk on the sidewalk to be picked over by anyone who happens by.

It is gentrifying, but it isn’t quite there yet. Almost every block seems to have a shuttered store front or perhaps an entire empty apartment building.

On the other hand, it is affordable. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to suggest it was.

It is a multi-cultural arrondissment as opposed to, say, the 7th, which is very French. The range of culinary choices ranges from Thai to Indian, Japanese, Cambodian, Korean, Guyanese … and that was within 100 yards of where we stayed.

But bistros have not been forced out. Plenty of those remain, some of them more oriented towards coffee in the morning and wine at night, but several good, old-fashioned, dinner-oriented places are still in business, and we patronized two of them.

Older people, in Paris, tend not to get out much; we know they live in the 11th, but we didn’t see many of them, aside from market days.

We did, however, see tens of thousands of young people, 35 and under, and they make the 11th a very busy and somewhat noisy place, especially on weekends.

It may not be a preferable place to raise a family, but pairs of people can make a go of it.

It is a bit difficult to get to and from, from the areas around the Metro’s 1 line, which runs east and west just north of the Seine.

Would I go back? Yes, I would. The 11th may not be a place where you would like to live, but for visiting … it’s just fine.